British Values
British Values at Grove Primary School
The Department for Education has published guidance on promoting British values in schools, to ensure young people leave prepared for life in modern Britain. At Grove Primary School we reflect and promote British values in all that we do. We enable our children to explore and develop their understanding further through our vision, our R.E. and P.S.H.E.E. schemes of work, links within the wider curriculum and our assembly themes.
The fundamental British values are democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect for and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs and for those without faith.
Democracy
Every child in school is involved in the democratic.png)
process of electing our School Council. During election times children put themselves forward for election, prepare manifestos and take part in secret ballots to elect one school councillor for each class. Additionally, although not elected, each class has a representative on our Eco and Sports councils. All of these representatives ensure that the opinions of their class are heard by gathering their views, representing them at meetings and then reporting back.
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Our annual Enterprise day enables classes to democratically decide on a product or game that they will sell on our market afternoon. They work together to make decisions on products, branding, advertising and selling. After the event, each class decides on the best way to spend their profit!
The Rule of Law
Our own school core values (We are kind and caring. We look after our school. We always tell the truth. We listen and try our best. We show respect.) are displayed in every classroom and around school and one becomes our focus for the week. Its importance, and how we show we are doing it, is shared in class and praised in our Friday assembly through our stars of the week. Our children understand that school rules are fair and important to keep us all safe. Our behavior policy is also displayed in every classroom. It enables children to distinguish between right and wrong and to understand that there are consequences for those who do not follow the rules.
Our community police officer also supports the school in enabling our children to develop an understanding of the rules of law within our society.
Individual Liberty
Children are taught that everyone is important and that we all have rights and responsibilities. We encourage our children to express their ideas and opinions and to ask questions in lessons. Our Independent Study sessions encourage children to choose who they will work with and how they will research and present their work. Additionally, our children have the freedom to choose which extra-curricular activities they wish to participate in (offered at lunch times and after school).
Mutual Respect
One of our five school core values is showing respect and we teach our children what this means in our everyday lives. It is an expectation at Grove Primary School that respect is shown to everyone, without exception. We model this through good manners and politeness, sharing and valuing each other’s work, respecting and celebrating different languages and considering those less fortunate through our charity work (coordinated by our School Council). Additionally, Junior Citizens are appointed from Years 3 and 6 to support excellent behaviour in, and around, the lunch hall.
Tolerance of different faiths and beliefs
At Grove Primary School we celebrate diversity in our school community. Through the Redbridge Agreed Syllabus for R.E. our children learn about major faiths and are encouraged to share their own beliefs with their class. During the year every year group shares their work on a faith or festival with the rest of the school. Our children enjoy visiting a range of places of worship from different faiths and visitors often come to school to talk about their religion to individual classes or in our assemblies. We enjoying hearing about the children’s own traditions and this enables all our children to develop a respect for different faiths and beliefs. Staff and pupils are encouraged to challenge prejudice or the use of discriminatory language whether for faith, ethnicity, disability, gender or other differences. This ensures that we show everyone in our school community respect.
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